Plans by Tottenham Hotspur to build a women’s football academy at Whitewebbs Park are due to be decided by Enfield Council’s planning committee in the next few weeks

Whitewebbs Park and (inset) wildlife expert Russell Miller

Enfield Council has been accused of ignoring a park’s importance for nature conservation prior to agreeing a lease with Tottenham Hotspur that would see a large chunk of it fenced off and built on.

A London wildlife expert and former chair of the Ancient Tree Forum wrote a blistering objection to the plans submitted by Spurs for a women’s football academy at Whitewebbs Park ahead of an imminent planning committee meeting which is expected to decide its fate.

Enfield Council’s 25-year lease to the Premier League football club is contingent on planning permission being obtained for the new facility, which would see one third of the lease area – chiefly comprising the former Whitewebbs Park Golf Course which shut down in 2021 – enclosed for use by its professional women’s team.

The plans have already drawn strong criticism from the likes of Springwatch presenter Chris Packham, who said there’d be “no football on a dead planet” when asked about Whitewebbs last year, while the Greater London Authority has officially objected on the basis the plans would represent “inappropriate development” of the Green Belt.

Now, specific claims of malpractice are being directed at the council by Russell Miller MSc, an arboriculturalist and ecologist, who claims correct procedures were ignored when the civic centre conducted a review of wildlife sites in 2020.

The council is obligated to periodically review the borough’s existing sites of importance for nature conservation (known as ‘Sincs’) as well as select sites with potential to become new Sincs. These sites are graded according to their importance – either metropolitan, borough or local – and form the basis of the London Plan’s stated goal to “protect the most important areas of wildlife habitat in London and provide Londoners with opportunities for contact with the natural world”. London Wildlife Trust adds that Sincs are “essential to making London a more pleasant place live, work and play”.

Enfield’s 2020 Sinc review, however, was conducted without obtaining species data from the capital’s environmental records centre, Greenspace Information for Greater London, and without conducting a specific study of Whitewebbs Park.

The Sinc review was conducted in the year following the council’s announcement, in 2019, that it would be tendering for a lease of Whitewebbs Park Golf Course and inviting interested parties to submit bids – with Spurs confirmed as the winners in 2021.

Russell Miller is not local to Enfield but has been working in London for two decades on trees and ecology. “The big issue with Enfield’s Sinc review is that it failed to look at any potential new sites – which means they effectively prevented Whitewebbs from being designated,” Russell told the Dispatch.

“Whitewebbs [the former golf course] is surrounded on three sides by [existing] Sincs. Usually you do a desk study and a field study, but even if you just did the desk study, it’s in the middle of three designated sites, which means it’s a wildlife corridor, because it links them together. Even if the quality of the site itself wasn’t as high, you would be minded to designate it on that basis alone.”

The three Sincs surrounding the former golf course are Whitewebbs Wood, Hilly Fields Country Park and Forty Hall Park and Estate, where beavers were reintroduced by the council after a 400-year absence in 2022. All three are deemed to have the highest, metropolitan, grade of importance for nature conservation.

Russell said: “The purpose of the Sinc review is to protect wildlife areas from development […] I am deeply suspicious about how Whitewebbs didn’t get designated. It just feels irrational if you are looking at it objectively.

“The Sinc review fails to look at new sites, it raises the status of [other] golf courses, and it fails to look at biological records – when grass snakes and great crested newts have been found at Whitewebbs.

“You can understand why councils are cutting corners but there is still a statutory duty to protect local ecology.”

Although a date is not yet confirmed, the Dispatch understands that the Spurs plans for Whitewebbs are likely to be debated by the council’s planning committee in the next few weeks.

Tottenham Hotspur pledges in its plans to deliver a “biodiversity net gain” across the area of the park it will be managing. While 121 trees would be felled, Spurs say 3,000 additional trees will be planted through the creation of a new woodland area, alongside “wildflower meadows, bat and bird boxes, and a new biodiversity corridor”.

Among mitigations for protected species at Whitewebbs, the plans state that “newt mitigation fencing” will be installed and new habitats where the amphibians can be moved to will be created.

The women’s football academy itself is described as a “regionally significant asset for Enfield” and would create between 58 and 74 new jobs. There would also be a “community access and outreach programme” for the borough to help encourage women and girls to get involved with football.

A council spokesperson said: “Enfield Council believes that all due processes have been followed at all times in respect to this issue. The application is expected to be heard by the planning committee in the new year. A meeting date is yet to be confirmed. Those who made representations on the application will be notified of the meeting date in advance.”

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